Xref: utzoo alt.hypertext:848 comp.multimedia:364 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ukma!s.ms.uky.edu!jpenny From: jpenny@ms.uky.edu (Jim Penny) Newsgroups: alt.hypertext,comp.multimedia Subject: Re: Images vs. Text Message-ID: Date: 16 Apr 91 23:15:02 GMT References: <1991Apr2.180348.19733@smsc.sony.com> <1991Apr02.235121.17834@convex.com>, <34980@athertn.Atherton.COM> Distribution: na Organization: University Of Kentucky, Dept. of Math Sciences Lines: 127 Scott McGregor Asks: >1) Is, as is the authors claimed above, a pictorial programming language >"*equally* acssible to users from all linguistic backgrounds"? Frankly, I don't believe this to be the case. I know that a picture of an armadillo has a different connotation to a Texan than it does to a native of New York city, and I doubt that it has much connotation at all to a native Chinese. On a less frivolous basis, I have read that the trash can icon went unrecognized in some cultures. One would have to do rather extensive testing to be sure that the pictures would be perceived in the same way. It would seem to be about the same effort as finding a bilingual programmer to translate text for you. >2) Is the concept of a variable really more difficult to users of ideographic >language users? I have no idea, I do not think that ideographic languages are substantially different from alphabetic languages, except that they are harder to learn to write and possibly to read. This is also beside the point in that the question was originally images versus text. I suspect the original poster used images as a synonym for "pictures". For, clearly text is an image, in the sense that we are receiving it in a visual fashion. I was objecting to the use of pictures as a substitute for text, not the particular fashion the in which the text was written. >3) If the availability of meaningless strings is the key to use of variables, >why is it so important to choose meaningful names for variables instead of >nonsense or conventionally meaningless names such as "X"? I am NOT the one saying that a meaningless string should be chosen. I do not accept idea of "sufficient context" that keeps coming up. It is true that given enough time and a medium which can be sensed and produced, people could probably learn to communicate with any convention. I.e., those little novelty crickets could be used to get a person to do anything he would otherwise be willing to do by clicking once for yes and twice for no. This would be communication. But this is the same as a computer scientist arguing that since all computation can be reduced to a Turing machine that everyone should be REQUIRED to program only on it. Or a mathmatician saying that everything should be reduced to Goedel numbers. While all of these are true, these facts have nothing whatsoever to do with practicality. Most of us spend much of a lifetime learning several means of communications. Anyone who suggests that we must learn another one should provide convincing reasons that the methods we are currently using are not sufficient and that their method is better. >4) Would you like to use such a pictographic programming language? Why or >why not? Inquiring minds want to know... I don't know. The only way to tell would be to use such a system for several years. As several people have pointed out, drawing is difficult, and if I have to draw a symbol for every possible notion, I suspect that most of the symbols I would end up drawing would just be words. I have seen descriptions of a system in which programs could be viewed at various levels of abstraction, i.e. when you were writing top-down style code you wrote a description, whien you created a block you wrote a description, etc. Then when the program was reviewed you could jump down as many levels of abstraction as needed to understand the task at hand. This in some way sounds useful. Now an addendum: I do not deny that pictures are useful. As someone pointed out, if I were to teach gross anatomy of a horse, I would like to have a picture of a horse nearby. However, I would not like to teach this anatomy by showing 5000 pictures of horses and saying say ``feathered'' or ``featherless'' until a person said ``Aha, I see.'' Any such demonstation have a picture, but would also have a bunch of words with lines pointing to parts of the picture, and a dictionary of definitions of the words. And it would be rather gruesome to use a set of pictures to teach the concept of cannon bone. There are useful reasons to use pictures in a computer interface: 1) The intended audience could be pre-literate. 2) The intended audience could come from the writer's culture but be non-literate. 3) The intended audience could simply prefer seeing the pictures, either as a relief from a day spent looking mostly at words, or as some part of a religious belief. 4) The intended audience might not read the writer's language. I certainly see nothing wrong with 1) through 3a). 3b) is a matter of taste, but it certainly seems to require enormous costs in terms of the amount of memory needed for the pictures compared to equivalent text. 4) is often claimed, but if it were indeed true, the program would be so intuitive to use that no manual was needed at all. I have certainly never seen such a program. Further, I do not believe that there is a set of pictures that has the same meaning to people from disparate cultures. However, the original poster said that his purpose was speed of use. This is certainly not going to be gained by using a pictorial interface. Firstly, if speed is the reason that you are doing something, a 'point and grunt' interface is not going to work because the mechanics of using one are even slower than typing. Secondly, if it takes a long time to decode a word, it is not because it takes longer for a word to be seen than a picture. Decoding the meaning of a picture will take at least as long, and since most of us have a great deal of practice decoding words, it will probably take longer to decode the picture. If I were to care about speed of response, I would not use either a purely pictorial or a purely alphabetic interface. I would ring whatever bell I could to draw the user's attention to the fact that the computer needed an immediate reponse (he may not be looking at the screen). I would blink whatever it was that demanded the immediate response. I would (if possible) also draw it in red letters. Finally, I would use some kind of 'hot key ' interface for the {hopefully small} set of responses the user could make. Finally, someone said that pictures could be used, and a dictionary provided to translate the pictures as needed. This raises another problem, namely; how is a dictionary of pictures to be arranged? (Yes I know that Chinese dictionaries are arranged by principal strokes and radicals, but just what are the principal strokes in a picture of a horse?)